He was aware that his hands were shaking as the buckle gave way and he let the belt drop to the floor. His heart double-pumped when her dress fell open to reveal the satin and lace of her black lingerie, the caramel and cream of her skin.

  Jealous of the night shadows that caressed her, he leaned to turn on the bedside lamp. “Angel,” he whispered, watching her face in the pale lamplight. He brushed the silk from her shoulders. It pooled in a vivid red puddle at her feet. “Do you have any idea how badly I want to see you in my bed?”

  With a slow flutter of her lashes, with a breath-stealing drop of her eyes, she satisfied that want. A shy angel, a sultry seductress, she slipped out of her heels, then reclined on her back in the middle of his bed.

  Her long, slim legs were covered to midthigh by sheer black stockings. The lace straps of her garter belt arrowed provocatively toward the wispy scrap of bikini panties that matched her smoky-black bra.

  Satin and seduction, innocence and acquiescence, her dark eyes never left his as she fanned her hair like a wild mane about her head and lay there, open and vulnerable to him. A gesture of trust. A declaration of need.

  He shrugged out of his jacket, ripped off his shirt, and made quick work of his shoes and socks.

  “You are so beautiful.” His weight sank into the bed beside her. Twisting at the hip, he braced his hands at either side of her waist. He couldn’t stop looking at her, at the picture she made lying there, the luxuriant flare of her hips, the concave of her slender waist, the generous swell of her breasts straining against the lace of her bra.

  “You’re everything I remembered,” he whispered as he bent his head to her breast and softly nuzzled. “You feel so good. Your softness. Your taste. Being with you like this—it’s all I’ve thought of.” Opening his mouth wide, he sucked her through the lace cup of her bra.

  “Have you thought of it too?” Leaving one breast for the promise of the other, equally sweet, equally responsive, he drew her deeply into his mouth. “Have you thought of this, Carmen? Of me touching you this way? Of me kissing you here . . . and here?”

  “Yes.” Yearning, she shivered and arched and pressed herself into his caress.

  With a low, shuddering growl, he tugged the lace aside with his teeth until her breast sprang free. Playfulness gave way then to possession. Desire gave way to greed. He took her fully in his mouth, sucking and savoring and satisfying a need that had been denied too long.

  He pulled away to unfasten the clasp of her bra and peel the delicate lace aside. He watched a darkening storm build in her eyes as he cupped her breast in his palm then rubbed the tip with his thumb.

  “Beautiful,” he whispered as her nipple, shiny and wet from his loving, crowned in the center of a coffee-dark aureole. “Beautiful,” he repeated, molding her fullness in his hand and lowering his mouth again.

  Midnight dreams paled in the light of her reality. Memory faded in the wealth of the here and now. He would have drowned gladly in the taste of her and died a happy man . . . until she moved sinuously against him and, with a boldness born of her rising desire, reached for the buckle of his belt.

  Her gently aggressive touch told of her urgency and sparked his need to see her response to the effect she had on him.

  Straddling her hips with his thighs, he rose to his knees above her. In silence, in communion, he relayed his wishes, then watched her face as comprehension dawned.

  With trembling fingers, she undid his belt, slowly lowered his fly, and freed him.

  In her eyes, he saw that she understood the power and the control she had over him.

  She could bring him to his knees.

  She could leave him shaken and weak.

  She could make him whole and strong, empower him with her longing.

  She managed to do it all when she slowly skimmed his pants and briefs down his hips, then took his tumescent length in her hands.

  Her touch was delicate. Yet her caress was as bold as the uninhibited desire glittering in her eyes. And her desire drove him over the edge. Lust, love, liberation became synonymous with her name. Ultimate possession became as crucial as breathing. He rolled away from her long enough to strip off his pants, find the package of protection in his bedside table, and roll it on.

  When he turned back to her, she opened her arms in a silent plea of invitation.

  He’d wanted this to be a night she’d remember. And as she lay there, open to him, wanton for him, he knew it was a night he would never forget.

  He spread his fingers wide and low over her belly. Uninhibited in her passion, she covered his hand with her own. She rocked her hips against the slow, steady pressure of his palm. Her flesh was heated satin, her scent a lure as seductive as the night. But it was her trust that was his undoing, a trust she offered as freely and as implicitly as her love.

  “Please,” she whispered, arching into his touch as his fingers slipped beneath the triangle of black lace and delved into her liquid heat.

  “Here?” he whispered, watching the desire in her eyes fire to smoky passion as he stroked her. “Like this?”

  “Yes . . .” A soft, tremulous shudder.

  “And this . . .”

  “Yessss . . .” A wild, reckless cry.

  Pushing her panties down her hips and over her legs, he covered her body with his, needing to feel her softness beneath him, aching to have her heat enfold him.

  She reached for him. Winding her arms around his neck, she captured his mouth with hers and drew him down, down into her fire, down into a desire that spiraled around them as dark as midnight, as volatile as thunder.

  She arched her hips against him in blatant invitation and unmistakable promise. Driven by her restlessness, he parted her thighs with his knee and, on a long, deep stroke, penetrated the sweet haven she offered. She was hot and tight, so hot he felt the burn, so tight he was afraid he’d hurt her. Yet when she rose to meet him, wet and welcome with wanting, he had to force himself to slow down.

  With a ragged moan, he pulled out. Bracing himself above her, he fought for control.

  “Come back.”

  Shaken by the depth of his need, possessed by her answering passion, he almost lost it then. He entered her again, slowly this time, inch by exquisite inch, until he was once more buried deep inside the part of her he swore no other man would ever know.

  When her body clenched around him like a tight, velvet fist, he groaned and withdrew.

  “Again,” she whispered, reaching for his hips to guide him back to her.

  Sweat beaded across the taut muscles of his back as he poised above her, holding back, holding strong, waiting to hear the words that were suddenly as important to him as the moment.

  “Please,” she pleaded, moving into him. Restless, needy, she locked her ankles around his hips and urged him back inside her.

  “Please what, Carmen? Tell me what you want.”

  He watched her face, witnessed her need as she reached between their bodies and touched him, caressing him until he thought his resolve would shatter.

  “I want you. Inside me.”

  “I want you, Logan,” he gritted out between clenched teeth. Suddenly he needed to hear the word he had tried to convince himself held little importance. A word he’d never heard her say. One word that made all the difference. “Say it, Carmen. Say my name.”

  Her eyes, aflame with passion, went soft and misty with understanding.

  Touching a hand to his hair, she guided his mouth to hers for a deep, desperate kiss. “I want you, Logan,” she murmured, her sweet breath mingling with his. “Only you, Logan . . . always and only you,” she promised on a reedy whisper, and with the pressure of her heels at the small of his back, invited him to come back home.

  With her words and her sighs to guide him, he filled her again, slowly at first. Then, driven wild by her breathy little gasps of building passion, he drove into her with fast, deep strokes. He was consumed by the thought of making her his. To physically possess her until he erased any doubt about his love for her from her mind. To relentlessly claim her until she understood she belonged to him.

  He wanted her thinking only of him. He wanted her aware only of him, of his love for her, of his desire for her, of the absolute beauty of their lovemaking and the strength of the two of them together.

  She cried his name and with heightening urgency matched the action of his hips. Her breath fluttered against his shoulder, hot and ragged as she clutched him tighter, begging for release, pleading for forever, chanting his name like a hushed, reverent prayer.

  When he felt the first convulsive little tremor ripple through her body, he, too, surrendered. On a long, shuddering breath, he plunged deep. His release was so explosive he felt suspended somewhere between a sweet, shattering death and a divine, sated delirium.

  In the dark of night, in the silence separating their lovemaking, Logan held her close to his side.

  Now that he knew what it felt like to experience her love and her passion, he didn’t want to give her an opportunity to feel insecure.

  “Stay with me,” he whispered. “Stay the night.”

  She was very quiet before stirring gently against him. He felt her denial even before she began to voice it. “I don’t think—”

  Rising to an elbow, he silenced her with a long, tender kiss. “Don’t think. Not tonight, Carmen. Just feel.”

  He lowered his mouth to the gentle curve of her shoulder and kissed her there. Nuzzling his way lazily to the delicate protrusion of her collarbone, he sipped and licked his way to the center of her breast. Laving her nipple with his tongue, he alternately nipped and kissed and sucked until he felt her shiver and moan and finally melt beneath the persuasion of his mouth.

  “Feel good?” he whispered against the flesh he’d wet, delighting at the chill bumps of response that rose on her skin.

  “Yes.”

  She looked both pagan and pure as she stretched like a sleek, tempting tigress.

  “And this?” he asked, dipping his tongue into the sweet indentation of her naval.

  When she moaned in answer, he moved lower, tasting the soft, giving flesh of her belly. He kissed the inside of one supple thigh, then the other before moving to the part of her he had yet to taste.

  She raised up on her elbows, her eyes wide with question, with guarded alarm, and with a very new and forbidden excitement.

  “Logan—”

  “Shhh . . .” Watching the shock in her eyes turn to a trembling anticipation, then a dark, exotic pleasure, he pressed his mouth to the black curls sheltering her femininity.

  At the first intimate stroke of his tongue, her head fell back. At the next, deeper stroke, she collapsed onto his pillow with a moan, her hands clutching convulsively at the sheets beneath her.

  Cradling her hips in his hands, he lifted her to his mouth, wanting to take her higher, wanting to savor and seduce and love her until his was the only name she would remember.

  She tasted of sex and secrets, of woman and desire. His woman, his desire. Her love was selfless with wonder, innocent and new.

  Only when she cried out and came apart for him, only when she lay limp and languid and gloriously wasted, did he ease back up her body.

  He gathered her tightly in his arms while she trembled. “Still want to go home?” he whispered against her temple.

  A small, sated chuckle rippled through her limp body. With supreme effort, she raised a hand to caress his jaw. “I couldn’t go anywhere, and you know it.”

  “And that, sweet Carmen,” he said, smiling against her hair, “was the general idea.”

  He was sleeping. In the middle of his bed, in the middle of the night, Carmen huddled against the headboard, hugging a pillow to her chest with his shirt draped over her shoulders. For long, intimate moments she watched him sleep.

  He was sprawled on his stomach, gloriously sated, the sheet falling low over his hips. Her heart fluttered at the thought of the masculinity it covered. He was a beautiful man. He was a beautiful lover.

  And she was a woman in love.

  Without stopping to think, she touched his hair. He stirred and reached for her. When he didn’t find her where he wanted her, he rose on his elbows and looked around until he saw her shadowed against the headboard.

  “I’m sorry I woke you.”

  Rolling over on his side, he wiped the sleep from his eyes with a rough sweep of his broad hand, then reached for her again. Without a word, he pulled her back beneath him and slipped inside her with an ease and an urgency that left her breathless.

  “Still sorry?” he asked against her breast as he arched his back and took her into his mouth.

  “Only . . .” She gasped as he rolled them together until he was spread-eagle on his back and she was brazenly astride him. “Only that I waited so long.”

  He chuckled, a rich, glorious rumble of a supremely confident male. “Then by all means,” he murmured, settling her deeper over his heat, “let’s make up for lost time.”

  His strong hands spanned her waist as he urged her into a rhythm as timeless as the love she felt for him and as lush as the act they were sharing.

  “You must think I’m shameless,” she whispered when they’d both recovered and were drifting sleepily in the aftermath.

  He hugged her hard. “Shameless. Wanton. A natural-born brazen hussy.”

  He grunted when her elbow found its mark and dug into his ribs.

  “And sexy and soft,” he added, his teasing grin fading, “Carmen, you’re the softest woman I’ve ever known.”

  “And you’ve known a lot of women.”

  She hated herself in that moment. She hated the jealousy she had no right to feel, she hated the slight tremor in her voice that conveyed her insecurity.

  “I told you I’d never lie to you again,” he said softly. “I’m not going to go back on that promise. Yes, there’ve been women. But never a woman who meant to me what you do. Never a woman who made a tinker’s damn worth of difference in my life before I met you.”

  She wanted to believe him. Lying in his arms as he held her, idly stroking her hair, his strong, sleek body a haven to shelter her doubts, she found it easy to envision the two of them together forever. But here, in his bed, was the illusion. Here, in his arms, was the fantasy.

  “Spend the day with me.”

  His hand stilled in her hair when he felt the sudden tension in her body.

  “I . . . I don’t have any clothes.”

  If her panicky grasp at that ridiculous straw of escape bothered him, he didn’t show it. He simply rose up and grinned rakishly down at her. “I don’t anticipate that you’ll be needing any.”

  Giving up and giving in to the moment and the man and the magic he made her feel, she let go of her doubt. She smiled up at him. “Has anyone ever accused you of being manipulative?”

  “Never to my face, angel. And you’re the only one I’d ever let get by with it.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  Emboldened by his admission, excited by the invitation in his eyes, she decided to test his indulgence even further.

  “And what else might you be of a mind to let me get by with?”

  His grin was nothing short of lethal as he lay back on the bed, his arms spread wide in a demonstration of his willingness to subject himself to her brand of manipulation.

  “Why don’t you put it to the test and see?”

  He passed the test with flying colors.

  When he roused her later to feed her breakfast, an inherent shyness caused her to insist that regardless of his ease with his nakedness, she needed something to wear.

  She slipped into his champagne-colored dress shirt. The exquisite, tailor-made shirt of watery silk felt like a cloud caressing her body and made the dress she’d been so proud to wear for him the night before seem like burlap in comparison. The fact that one button on the cuff of this shirt probably cost more than her dress suddenly diminished the pleasure she’d felt being squired around on his arm.

  It was only one of the myriad contrasts between his world and hers, and stirred her doubts to life again. She sat at his elegant dining-room table, shoving the omelet he’d made her around her plate with a fork. A gold-plated fork. An outrageously ornate and fragile plate.

  “Much as the idea appeals to me, Carmen,” he said, looking thoughtful as he rested his forearms on the table, “I can’t keep you in bed forever. But if you’re going to get that look on your face every time you stop and look around you, I’m going to have to give it a try.”

  She glanced at him, then away.

  “Carmen, these” —he made an expansive gesture that took in the opulent furnishings of the penthouse— “these are only things. They’re no threat to you. And they have no meaning for me. You. You are the only thing here that matters.”

  She folded her hands in her lap and leaned back to look at him. “I don’t think you’re being realistic about this,” she said in a small but determined voice.

  He scowled. “Realistic?”

  “There are things about me that you don’t know.”

  “The same could be said of me.”

  “Nothing about us is the same Logan,” she insisted, willing him to see things from her perspective.

  “If you’re talking about wealth, if you’re talking about background . . . if you’re talking, as I suspect, about heritage . . . Carmen, surely you realize by now none of it makes any difference.”

  “It makes all the difference.”

  “To you?”

  “To how you’ll come to perceive me. To how you’ll eventually react when the people who are close to you make it clear that who I am, what I am, makes a difference to them.”

  “Why don’t you let me worry about them? Why don’t you give me a chance to prove how little it matters? Carmen, the only thing that matters is that I love you.”